On returning in 1948,
from service overseas,
Ronnie at the
age of twenty,
took up lodgings in the house
of a middle-aged widow
and her
adolescent daughter.
The arrangement was
hung
upon the twin pillars
of breakfast in the kitchen
and an evening meal
in the
chilly dining room.
There were
contractual obligations on either side,
standard stuff:
payment a week in
advance;
a rent book;
a laundry basket emptied weekly.
And there were requests for consideration
from
the landlady
regarding
the use of the facilities;
the practicalities of locking
up if Ronnie should be returning late;
and an insistence upon a reassuring
absence
of lady friends.
Ronnie,
though
filled with an innocent confidence
garnered through his years abroad,
still harboured
an unrequited yearning
for a certain young woman
named Dorothy
whose
acquaintance he had made
at the American University Beirut
and consequently he had,
at this
time,
no interest in exploring
other romantic avenues.
One afternoon,
on opening the top right hand drawer of the
chest in his bedroom,
Ronnie was taken aback
by the presence
of a pair of his
own
white cotton jockey shorts
laid carefully
atop the rest of the contents in
the drawer.
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The shorts,
softened with age and frequent washing
and
with a developing looseness in the elastic,
bore the hallmarks
of some
unwarranted
attention:
red daubs on the white fabric,
which upon closer
inspection
revealed themselves
to be scarlet
lipstick
applied directly to the garment
from what must have been
liberally-coated female lips.
Bow-shaped kisses
staining Ronnie’s
intimates.
Ronnie hurriedly slammed the drawer shut.
Then tentatively reopened it
perhaps in the hope
that the
chest was in some way magical
and offered the possibility
that the garment
might have
mysteriously disappeared
or at the very least
returned to its unadulterated
state.
It had not.
Removing the underpants
from the drawer
he placed them
flat upon the candlewick counterpane.
Then
after a moment’s consideration
folded them carefully
ensuring that
as far as
possible
the sticky evidence was
concealed within the bundle.
He then secreted them
at the back of the
drawer
in his bedside cabinet
alongside
his address book,
the photograph of
Dotty in her tennis dress,
his Authorised Version,
his rosewood pipe
and the
two coiled sleeve supports
sent to him by his mother
in anticipation of some,
as
yet unidentified,
desk-bound employment.
The meal that evening
was somewhat more hurried than usual,
and during it Ronald found himself
studying the two female occupants of the house
with
questioning,
curious eyes.
He found
himself checking
their mouths
as they chewed
in order to establish overall
shape and size
and looking for any hint
of artificial colouring.
In bed that night
he continued his mental enquiries
as to
the identity
of the perpetrator
of this act of
sartorial violation.
The older woman,
in her late forties,
was somewhat dowdy
in both
attire and disposition.
Since the death of her husband,
Ron surmised,
life without her male companion
may have provoked
a longing in her loins
and his
own presence
may have brought about a
surging of sexual desire
encouraging her to
throw
caution to the wind.
She may have
regarded the lipstick
as the final weapon in her
arsenal
of aging femininity
and
found her passion
thoroughly expressed
through this
cosmetic ejaculation.
The daughter, Rosemary,
fifteen and timid,
had given Ronnie no prior indication of an interest in him:
her fringe concealed eyes that shone
but dimly;
and she was as yet
still seemingly unaware
that the slight plumping
out of her chest was a
prefiguring
of a general maturation
of her pubescent
body.
Ronnie,
having often observed her
with
one or other
Victorian novel
under her arm,
wondered whether she had
fallen
prey
to a powerful
romantic
attachment
to him
which could only find voice
through this reckless act
of passionate graffiti.
In his mind,
Ron placed the two side by side.
Mother and daughter:
the sexually experienced
against the
innocent.
He balanced probability
with
desirability.
He weighed his own,
largely
unformed,
ideas
of an imagined bedtime companion
with these two potential,
flesh
and blood candidates,
and then again
cross referenced them
with Dorothy.
His confusion was complete.
He rose at six
after several sleepless hours;
hurriedly
packed his few things
(save the underpants)
into his brown cardboard suitcase;
wrote a brief note of
apology
(though not of explanation)
to his landlady
and inserted the next
week’s rent into the envelope
before quietly slipping
out of the house
toward
the
Green Line
bus stop.
